The date is unknown when the Backup Vocal overdubs
were added to Any Day Now and Power
Of My Love - A possible explanation of this
could be as follows:-
There is a page missing from the session logs
between March 25 and May 5 1969, and as there
appears to have been no backup vocals overdubbed
to any songs in May (Apart from May
6 & 7
where Brass was also overdubbed) it is safe to
assume that it is from March. The date of the
job number at the bottom of the March
25 overdub session log is March 28, so it
would be safe to assume that this missing overdub
session would be before March 28. The March 25
overdub session was for "Strings" and
"Backup Vocals" and was held from 2.00pm
until 5.00pm but it may well be that another session
was held in the evening of March 25 but just for
the backup vocalists (Sonja Montgomery, Millie
Kirkham, Dolores Edgin, Hurshell Wigington and
Joe Babcock) to add their vocals to the missing
six tracks.
If you listen carefully to the vintage mix of
Any Day Now you can hear where Elvis' vocals
were replaced and can hear the repair drop in
and out of the track. Clearly during this song
Elvis' vocal mic is picking up residual sound
from the drumkit - when we're hearing part of
the original vocal track we can hear bleed through
from the kit centred in the stereo image. When
we hear the vocal repair section we only hear
the drums though their dedicated track, which
is mixed hard left. When the vocal repair section
finishes, Elvis original vocal track is faded
back-in which has the side effect of bringing
the drum bleed back into the centre of the sound
image. People will probably need to listen on
headphones to notice this.
Remixed versions of Any Day Now, Power
Of My Love, True Love Travels On A Gravel
Road and Who Am I? can be found on
'The Memphis Record'.
'Sessions III' lists Elvis' Harmony vocal overdub
of Do You Know Who I Am? along with the
vocal repair of And The Grass Won't Pay No
Mind as being done on September 26, but this
surely cannot be the case as the strings and backup
vocals were overdubbed on March 25 for Do
You Know Who I Am? and May 7 for And The
Grass Won't Pay No Mind, and the acetate of
Do You Know Who I Am? found on 'Memphis Memories'
does not contain these overdubs, meaning it must
have been cut before then. The most likely date
for Elvis' vocal repair and Harmony vocal overdub
of Do You Know Who I Am? and vocal repair
of And The Grass Won't Pay No Mind is February
22. This same scenario also applies to Only
The Strong Survive and The Fair's Moving
On.
By taking out two of the four channels from the
rare Japanese Quadraphonic LP of 'From Elvis In
Memphis' is how the "Previously Unreleased
Versions" were created on the bootleg "The
Other Side Of Memphis" (Bilko).
In March of 2007, Sony decided to go through all of Elvis' masters. They retransferred everything and remastered all tracks including repairing as many clicks, pops, bad edits and dropouts as they could. They have used these newly mastered recordings on their new releases since 2007 including budget soundtracks, 'Legacy' releases, the 30 disc 'Complete Elvis Presley Masters' collection and the Franklin Mint package.
Thanks to Matthew Worsley regarding the vocal
repair on Any Day Now.
